A STUDY OF SUICIDE

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32352, 18 July 1970, Page 4

A STUDY OF SUICIDE

Black Suicide. By Herbert Hendin. Allen Lane, Penguin Press. 176 pp. Suicide as a social phenomenon rather than a personal problem early attracted the attention of systematic observers, and two quite disparate traditions have emerged in discussions of the subject The sociologist derives from Durkheim and looks for explanations in terms of the individual’s alienation from the society in which he lives and his inability to accept and play out the role society demands of him: in contradistinction, analytical psychologists have tried to look within the individual, and trace the dynamics of the personality changes which lead up to a suicide attempt One can employ the sociological approach even on samples of successful suicides, if they leave enough socio-economic information behind, but the analytic approach can only be used on persons who have not yet been successful suicides. As there are probable differences between persons who make one successful suicide attempt and others who make a series of spectacular failures of the business, it is not always certain that the two approaches are dealing with precisely the same group.

Dr Hendin leans towards the analytical type of explanation, but takes care to interpret his cases in the light of what is known about the pressures which ghetto life imposes upon the black American urban poor. This group presents special problems in interpretation; for the average rate of suicide for black Americans is lower than that of white, but in New York city the suicide rate for young blacks is twice that for whites of comparable age. The study relies on rather terse case histories and sets of psychological test scores, and is repetitive in detail and contentious in interpretation. The best parts of the book are the statistical tables which the author did not himself collect One is left wondering, in view of the squalor and degradation which the urban American black experiences.

what characterises those blacks who have never contemplated suicide as a way out The author has no control groups, black or white, or persons with similar histories of homosexuality, violence, crime and mental instability who did not become suicidal, so the whole study is incomplete at precisely the points where it could have given us some new insights. The book is not well documented, it reads like a rough popularisation of a research project done on the cheap.